Data communications networks employ various data communications protocols to transport data between computing devices (“network nodes”) that are connected thereto. These protocols generally have various limitations, such as security, ability of network nodes to move, quality of service (“QOS”), and so forth. These limitations are generally improved by adding products or services at the operating system or other “application” level of multi-level data networking architectures. As an example, firewall software is sometimes used to improve security limitations of the Internet Protocol (“IP”). Notwithstanding these improvements, the network layer is commonly still vulnerable to various attacks because security, interoperability, and QOS, are interdependent. As an example, when the network layer is protected by implementing a security model, nodes that implement the security model may be unable to adequately exchange information with other nodes that do not implement the security model. Moreover, the security model may require a secure channel between two network nodes and the network may be unable to duplicate the secure channel during a subsequent connection between these network nodes, and thus QOS may be affected. Often, conventional application-level improvements come at the expense of scalability, interoperability, QOS, or other desirable attributes of flexible data communications networks.